


To Live and Die in Grosse Pointe

by lasergirl



Category: Grosse Point Blank (1997), To Live and Die in LA (1985)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent RIchard Chance doesn't die that day in L.A. He gets to go to his ten-year high school reunion instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _To Live and Die in LA_ is a badass 80's cop film about Secret Service agents tracking down a counterfeit money ring, with plenty of gratuitous undressing/nudity and sex, drinking and cocktalk. Oh, and jumping off of bridges and driving cars the wrong way on freeways. Richard Chance is played by the very young, very tight-pantsed William Petersen. He's tracking down Eric Masters (Willem Dafoe) to revenge himself after his long-time partner Jimmy Hart gets murdered, and gets saddled with a partner he doesn't want or like (Vukovich). But Vukovich ends up the winner, because Chance gets shot in the head and killed at the counterfeit money exchange. There exists on the DVD an alternate ending where Chance miraculously doesn't die, but they both get transferred to Alaska... which was too ridiculous for words. So I'm not entirely off-base when I resurrect Chance. I'm just giving him a better story to play with.
> 
> Thanks to [](http://dien.livejournal.com/profile)[**dien**](http://dien.livejournal.com/) and [](http://guede-mazaka.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://guede-mazaka.livejournal.com/)**guede_mazaka**.

  
_"Okay?"_

_"You're beautiful."_

  
**JAN 30 06:15:03 HRS**

\+ in a split second the whole world goes black.

"You can't do this to me, man. Don't do this to me!"

Panicked scrabbling. There's cold in his fingers + toes + the sound of arctic wind in his ears. Chance sees fire dancing behind his eyelids.

After a while there are sirens. A cold breeze blows down his throat. He can hear his heartbeat fade in the terrible, terrible blackness. This is the end.

  
**FEB 13 15:47:32 HRS**

He awakens to white, to medicinal air, to the steady hiss of a machine keeping his lungs filled, in + out + the scrolling heartbeat that leaps in spikes on a screen.

His eyes do not focus; not on the nurse who is bending over the IV shoved into the bend of his arm, not the room which could be anywhere. The first thing he sees, far away + in a haze of smog is the Vincent Thomas Bridge.

Well, fuck that, didn't he beat the goddamned odds. Again. He'd laugh if there wasn't a tube taped into his mouth. He feels every ridge in his throat all the way down to his lungs.

Nurse bends over the crook of his arm and puts something in it, a spike that shines silver against the sheets . No. He can't cry out + he falls again. Loses that sliver of consciousness to the goddamn black.

  
**FEB 26 20:12:21 HRS**

Richard Chance wakes up screaming bloody murder, wrists tied to the bed frame, leather cuffs around his ankles. In the black terror in his head there was fire, a blaze that swept the city away, + burned it to an ash. He shakes + shudders until his eyes roll back in his head. Nurse runs in but it's already too late. A jerky stop-motion film plays + he dances.

He isn't supposed to be alive. For the record, he isn't. The ward is locked, the patient recorded as a violent felon + no one – not even Chance – knows the truth.

\+ a person can live, even with a freak gunshot to the head but he never believed it. He doesn't believe it now. His right side is paralyzed + Nurse can't tell if he's even in there. He swears at everyone when he wakes.

  
**MAR 6 09:25:04 HRS**

He jumped without a line, stretched without a safety. The ground is rushing up at him, smog gives way to gridlock gives way to individual grains of sand on the asphalt.

Stop.

The world stands still when an angel – is that an angel or Nurse in disguise? – spikes a vein and siphons in life. His eyelids flutter in the wind and open. A note sounds on a cast-iron bell for Chance. Who's there but Vukovich.

"Thought you weren't gonna make it, man," is what V. says to him. Chance watches his lips move and hears the arctic wind. "Thought you were leaving us."

The phrase 'somewhere over the rainbow' could apply at times like this. Chance rolls his eyes and tries his voice. He sounds like shit. "I sure as hell wouldn't be hanging around here if they let me out. Christ."

V. has a spooked, white-face expression going, a cocky mask that slips to show he's still just a scared little boy. Bullshit bravado. "You're a freak, man. You know that less than ten percent of guys who get shot like that even live?"

"Johnny, what the hell do I care." Chance sees his own body laid out, yellow and sick and holy fuck full of tubes and wires. Doesn't want to see. No such thing as luck anymore. The whole act, the fires and the basejump and the sex and booze and the badge. "Fuck off."

"We got Masters," Vukovich whispers into his ear. "We got it all."

When his eyes fall shut he sees Masters dancing on strings in a bonfire and he wishes Vukovich would join him.

  
**MAR 19 16:25:54 HRS**

Surgery puts a skull back over his brain and he's out for two more weeks on morphine. The flames he sees dancing are the scars in his memory, burned celluloid holes in film. He's sprocket-run and jump-cut, hanging in space and then plummeting. Time stands still until it crashes like a tidal wave and rolls over everything. Green underwater dreams and fire and falling.

  
**APR 7 23:59:59**

It snaps back into place and where the fuck is he? Vukovich's not here. Nurse is vanished. The hospital – it's a hospital? It looks like a fucking prison – is silent as a tomb. Chance struggles to sit up, reeling, weak and he can barely hold his head up, and his right arm's numb with pins and needles jumping through it.

"Anyone here? Shit."

His voice echoes emptily in the white room. If he wasn't so sure he was alive now he thinks he'd be dead. He counts heartbeats until dawn.

23,904 and Nurse walks in expecting nothing. Chance flashes her a ladykiller grin and doesn't imagine how awful he must look. She doesn't scream. Not quite.

Fucking miracle.

  
**MAY 12 18:15:27 HRS**

The doctors explain how lucky Chance is and every third word sounds like bullshit. They just don't want to admit they don't know why he isn't dead. They can't even give an estimate for recovery because he's already broken all their expectations and the Secret Service is clamoring for him to come back to the fold.

'Fuck that,' thinks Chance, but the Company pays his bills. And goddamn Vukovich comes to take him home.

It isn't really home, it's just some place filled with his stuff that he never wanted. He was happiest with Ruth but what the fuck did he know? She set him up. And by the shit-eating grin on V.'s face he can tell she's probably still setting him up. Every night.

"You know I went base-jumping for the first time when they said you were dead." John drives the beat-up motor pool boat with Chance in the back, and he glances into the rear-view mirror to make sure he's okay. Like he gives a damn. "You were right. What a fucking rush."

"Course I was right," Chance watches the blur of Los Angeles flash past the freeway strip and fingers the thin red crease in his hairline that's the end of all his plastic surgeries. "I knew you would. You stepped right in, didn't you?"

V.'s grin turns sour and forced. "Whaddya mean?"

"Don't play fucking head games with me, Johnny," Chance snarls, grabbing at his bare throat from the back seat. The car jumps wildly as V. pries the iron fingers off his windpipe. "You stole my fucking girl. You stole my life. Who the hell do you think you are now, anyway? Some kind of hero cop?"

The red streaks rise even before Chance loses his grip and slumps back into the corner of the car. He's still not back to normal, but what's normal? His gun hand's weak and his leg is fucked up, and he hasn't had a hard-on in months. And he's going back to a shitty apartment, for a shitty desk job and a future he doesn't even want, and he's supposed to be grateful? Well, fuck that.

  
**END PART ONE**

Questions? Comments? Feedback always appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

JUNE 29 08:05:32 HRS

Heads turn on his first day back in the bureau, and not in a good way. When Chance hobbles in with a cane he can see the pity votes going way, way up. So what if he used to be hot shit. Ain't nothing now, no matter what the big Boss says. Just sit in the corner and be made an example of.

He smiles at everyone until his face hurts and he has to go into the men's room for a cigarette. Almost puts his fist through the mirror but stops just in time. The door bangs open against the wall and Vukovich's standing there.

"Heard you were back," he says warily, staying out of arm's reach. They stare at each other for a moment and Chance sees the stories written in lines on V.'s face. Nice stories. He can almost remember them when they used to be his.

"They don't need a goddamn monkey, what they want is a lesson." Chance snarls and drops his cigarette butt in the sink where it hisses a slow death. "You give them this idea? Was this your fucking choice?"

"I didn't do nothing."John shrugs and saunters past Chance to the urinals and unzips. He is elegant now, in a way he never was before. Self-satisfaction and notoriety wears well on him. "God knows you shouldn't be here, Richie. Not like this."

Red rage. Chance lurches across the floor and shoves Vukovich cock-first into the wall. "Listen to me, you little shit," he growls, his good hand tight on Johnny's nuts, "I am twice the agent you will ever be. You wouldn't be anywhere without me. I was onto Masters, not you. You couldn't find your own asshole in the dark with both hands. I'm not asking for your sympathy, but I have earned your fucking respect so you'd better remember that."

John whimpers far back in his throat, echoes bubbling against the porcelain. Chance's breath is hot and angry at the back of his neck. Probably the closest they've been in months.

"I'm sorry," he chokes. "Didn't mean it like that."

And Chance doesn't believe him anyways but it gets John his balls back.

 

JULY 15 14:57:03 HRS

He plays it easy. He does the trivial paperwork that comes over his desk. He signs off on the firearms reports and the stakeout overtime and the petty little tips and bribes and payoffs and he hates every second of it. He doesn't talk to anyone, just comes in and does his eight and goes home to drink off the bad days in front of pirated cable television porno in the apartment that's not really his. He plays everything by the rules, the way its meant to be played. By idiots and small children.

He lies when the big Boss pulls him into the office one afternoon and says he feels great.

"Hell, I'm just grateful you didn't turf me out on my ass when I got outta the hospital," Chance tells him. He knows the Boss is glad he's off the dangerous cases, isn't running around with a loaded gun, high on adrenaline and testosterone.

"How are you doing, anyway," big Boss leans back, watching the wonder boy dispassionately. "Everything ok? Work not too hard?"

"I'd give my right nut for another action job," Chance shrugs and puts his foot up on the corner of the desk. It leaves a big, booted angry footprint in chalk. "What'll it take?"

Boss man shakes his head. "You were a liability when you were jumping off bridges. How do I know you're not going to do worse?"

Chance thinks 'How can it possibly get any worse?' when he nods and says, "I guess you're right."

"On the other hand..." big Boss man flips a folder across the desk to him. "This might be right up your alley."

Dear Pointe High Alumni,

Can you believe it's been ten years since you left Grosse Pointe? Where are you now?

Are you in an Outward Bound canoe trip, like Brooke Stenson? Or perhaps in charge of public appearances for the NFL like Leslie Gunther. Sandy Glasser owns a cheese shop!

Looking at yearbooks and pictures evokes so many memories. Some good, some bad, but all interesting. Whenever news of you filters back, the school is excited and proud of your accomplishments. As a graduate of the class of 1986, you are someone special.

Remember, there is nowhere you can go that you haven't learned how to go in time.

So come on back to the old oak tree, acorn!

Signed,

Pointe High School Reunion Committee.

 

Chance looks across at him without cracking a smile. "You gotta be fucking kidding me."

 

AUG 5 09:37 HRS

The place hasn't changed in years. Why should it? Stuck in the crotch of the Great Lakes, it never really had the room or drive for expansion. It's pretty. It's pleasant. The sun is shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky. Naturally, Chance loathes it.

He did what any sane kid would have done under the circumstances if he could get away with it; he ran off and learned how to kill people. Sure, it seemed like a bad idea to his guidance counsellor, but how else was he going to get away with it? The Secret Service covered up his tracks, erased the tiny slivers of his life that lodged in Grosse Pointe. He wasn't much more than a blurry yearbook photo and a faint memory of a friend of a friend.

To be honest, he preferred it. Easier to answer to yourself than to people who were just trying to look out for you. And surprise, it turned out he had a problem with authority... doesn't everyone.

He tries not to think about what he wants to do to Johnny when he gets back from Michigan. It starts with breaking every tooth in his head and progresses from there. Maybe he'll break the big Boss's knuckles just for fun. Fuck.

In his hotel room, he drinks bourbon straight from the bottle and stares at the welcome package from his old high school. Never in a million years, let alone ten, had he ever imagined he would be here.


	3. Chapter 3

AUG 5 23:30:07 HRS

The reunion night's the night Chance has decided to do his little job, but that's still three days away and he's got nothing better to do but listen to the radio while he cruises the near-empty streets of his old hometown and wait for dark. When the sun goes down, the only place to go is the Hippo Club. It's nothing like what he remembered, but everything he expected; stained tables, poorly-lit booths. It's more like a greasy strip dive than a local watering hole. At least, back in L.A. it would be full of dancers. Here, it's just full of over-the-hill waitresses and people who all look vaguely familiar. Chance chills inside when he realizes he's walked right back into his past.

He sees the kid at the back at the same time the kid sees him, and already there's a problem. He's smart, got the layout of the bar and the whole table arrangement under control. His back's to the wall. He's twitchy, and though Chance knows exactly what Martin does for a living, he still goes over to ask him. Just because he likes to fuck with people.

"Martin? Martin Blank?" Chance approaches the table and the kid looks around with a black scowl and scopes him out. He'd never forget a face. "You're here for the reunion?"

"Christ, what the hell happened to you?" The realization gives a touch of humanity to Martin's pale face. And a hint of embarassment as he struggles to remember Chance's name. "Rich, right? Richie?"

"Chance," and he shakes Martin's hand. Cold, strong grip. Strong enough for Chance to feel just a twinge of irritation at his own weakness, which is apparent the moment their hands touch. He cocks his hip against the edge of Martin's table. "Are you drinking alone tonight?"

A burst of drunken laughter erupts from a knot of pretenders over at the bar, and Martin can barely disguise his shudder. "This," he sighs, waving a hand, "Is a fucking nightmare."

"Well, let me buy you a drink." Chance reaches for his wallet and Martin freezes, his nervous fingers jumping to the butt of the gun under his arm. He quirks an eyebrow, pretends not to notice. "You look like you could use one."

They are sitting playing the verbal tango of catch-up when a pretty, overly made-up woman wobbles over to them. Chance looks at her too-short skirt and Northern thighs and misses Los Angeles even more.

"I'm Amy, I remember you from high school," she slurs to Martin as she paws at him. "Always such a serious boy. You gotta lighten up, honey. Have a little fun."

"I am light." He pushes away her hands but they crawl back like leeches. Like starfish. Like something dumb and predatory and bloodsucking. "Look, Amy, you're a very nice girl, and I find your attention, uh, touching, but this is hardly the time. Have you met my friend Rich? I'm sure he'd love to lighten up with you instead."

Chance grins into his bourbon. He's just buzzed enough to make driving back to the hotel a bad idea. This also makes Amy seem like entertainment.

"Hey, Rich, you wanna dance with me?" He toys with the idea of slipping her a fifty to wriggle on his lap for ten minutes. But a glance around the bar proves that'd be a bad idea too. Small town, and god only knows who Amy's fucked since high school that might want a little payback.

"Sure, babe, you got a private room somewhere?" He pinches her butt near the join of her thigh and she squeals. "Maybe a couple of friends? Cause you know, Martin and I were just looking for a little entertainment."

The look in Amy's eyes says 'help,' while her mouth tries to smile at him. Chance laughs and tosses back the rest of his drink while she's trying to decide if he's kidding or not. When he gets to his feet, his cane is looking more and more like a weapon and she backs up a few steps.

"Uh. I meant, you know," she shrugs at the few people with balls enough to dance to 'Message in a Bottle' on the tiny dance floor. "Here, kinda."

"Here? Sure. Whaddya say, Martin?" Chance winks, takes Amy's wrist and spins her so she's pinned against their table. He grinds his hip into her short, short skirt. She squeaks, too scared for total outrage.

"I call dibs when she passes out," Martin deadpans.

"You're both perverts!" It takes Amy all her courage to pull her hand free and she slaps Chance across the face as hard as she can. He doesn't do anything but laugh, and she wiggles out of his grasp. "Asshole!"

"Hey, where are you going?" Chance digs in his pocket for that fifty. "I can pay!" But Amy doesn't look back. Chance chuckles and leans on his cane. "Well, damn."

Martin looks at him a moment, deadly solemn, then bursts out laughing.

"Holy shit, you're an animal," he wheezes, trying not to choke on his martini olive. "I had no idea."


	4. Chapter 4

AUG 6 02:17:52 HRS

They stagger to the parking lot together after last call and Martin drops his keys in the mud. He's quiet, but he's far from sober: neither of them, it seems, are in any state for driving. Or walking. Chance throws an arm around Martin's neck.

"We should find an all-nighter," he suggests, and Martin giggles. "Bootleg some booze, get a couple girls. Not that bitch back at the bar, there's got to be someplace we can go!"

"You've got to be kidding me." Under Chance's weight, Martin's weaving. He stops at a little park bench by the edge of the parking lot. It's such a wholesome little bench it almost makes him sick. He throws Chance onto it. "In this town? You'd be lucky to find anyone awake past midnight."

"Well, fuck." Chance sprawls suggestively across the bench. He's watching Martin jump at shadows.

It's been ten years, and he's still young, younger, youngest. How in hell did he manage to survive that crackdown in the 90's when the government tried to keep a handle on all the hired guns by seducing them with health benefits and a retirement package? That move brought a lot of the sensible professionals in from the cold but not the nutjobs. He still hasn't figured out what side of the line Martin's walking.

Maybe neither. The thought occurs to him when Martin breaks out into hysterical laughter, waving his arms at nothing, cursing and swearing and doubling over. He slumps onto the bench beside Chance.

"You go past your old house? Did it hold some kind of memory for you? You ever talk to your folks anymore?" Martin doesn't look at him but at his own nervous hands, fretting and twisting at his pants leg. "I wasn't going to come, I mean, reunion, right? What a loss. I hated high school. But I came anyway and now I'm wishing I was never here. Wiped away. I mean, Fuck, man!" He leaps up again, pacing the empty asphalt and Chance can see the glint of the gun he's carrying under his arm. "I'm kinda glad the place blew up."

"You blew up your house?" Chance digs in his pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

"Yes. Well, no. It wasn't my house." Twitch. "Well, it was my house. Only it was a fucking Ultramart! And my Mom… is so batshit that they coulda built it right under her nose and she never would have seen it coming! And I mean, my best friend is a real estate agent now? Who the fuck are these people? This is hell!" He stops, panting, chest heaving, all hard angles and stooped shoulders and inked-on misery. Chance shakes his head and snaps the lighter into flame.

"You know those things will kill you," says Martin.

Wordlessly, Chance holds out the package.

Martin snags one and lights it off the battered zippo, finally coming to rest back on the bench. He leans backwards, staring up at the sky.

"Fuck it," he snarls at the constellations. "I hate to say it, but I think the job is getting to me."

This is where Chance has been trying to go all night, only now he's not so sure he wants to. He was just starting to like the guy. It's the standard reunion patter: "And where have you been for ten years, Martin?"

He snaps up ramrod straight and turns with a bitter, skeletal smile, eyes black. "I freaked out. Joined the Army. Went into business for myself. Now I'm a professional killer." It sounds rehearsed.

"Quite a cottage industry there for a while. Good portfolio?"

Martin shrugs. "Can't complain." The glance is a sideways one, but Chance knows Martin's got theories he won't say. Happens to him all the time. Martin's very careful not to say that he looks like shit, but he knows it. "And where the hell were you, man? Dropped off the face of the earth?"

Chance thinks about the bridge and, in a way, Martin's right. "If I told you then I'd have to kill you." He grins.

Scowl. "You secret service guys are all the same. Think I couldn't tell the moment you came into that place?" He rolls his eyes and crosses his ankles out in front. "Why'd you leave?"

"I got shot," Chance says dully. He doesn't have much recollection of the event now, but he knows that much. "In the head."

The only part of Martin that moves is an eyebrow. "Must have been a real life-altering experience for you."

"Mindblowing." Chance gets that far before he starts to laugh. For once, Martin grins along with him. That's a plus. "Fuck, man, ten years and we're sitting on a goddamn park bench like we're married! Come back to my place, I've got a ten-year-old bottle scotch we can murder in celebration."

"You're an asshole, Rich." Martin saunters to the curb to flag down a solitary taxicab, and he smiles. "I like that."


	5. Chapter 5

AUG 6 3:02 HRS

 

They get back to Chance's shitty strip-motel and everything breaks down. Chance staggers from the cab to the motel without help, but by the time they reach his room, Martin's got half the weight hanging from his shoulder. Not that he doesn't mind; if he'd wanted to leave Chance behind he could have done so hours ago.

"You never said why you were here," Martin reminds him as Chance fumbles the card-key into the slot, "No one ever just comes back just for their reunion. What was it?"

Chance shrugs and shoves the door open. "Fear?"

"Liar." Martin quick-steps across the small room and slams the venetian blinds shut over the windows. "You're just saying that to make me feel better. My friend... friend? Secretaries can be friends, right? She's the only person I talk to who knows my shoe size, that has to count for something, she asked me that and it got me thinking. You can never go home again, right?"

Chance digs through his luggage for the promised bottle of scotch, tuning out Martin's psychobabble until he gets to:

"- fear of death. I don't know what that's called. Mortality?"

Chance pivots and tosses him the bottle to shut him up. "You ever base-jump, Martin? People always thought I was crazy to do it. I won a lot of money betting against them. But there's no better way of staring death in the face." He sinks down on the corner of the bed, leaving enough room for Martin to perch beside him.

Martin swigs from the bottle, pauses and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. "See, I'd think that maybe death... is the best way to do that."

"You're a defeatist, that's your problem." When the bottle comes back, Chance's mouthful is a big one, and it burns all the way down to his gut. He grins, and takes another before passing it back.

"That's my problem?" Martin slurs, "I kill people for a living! That's my problem."

"You also talk too much," Chance passes him the bottle and Martin upends it for the last half-inch. Scotch dribbles down his neck.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?"

"Want me to?" Chance grins.

Martin rolls over onto his back and splays his legs. "You're a handsome devil," he smoulders, "What's your name?"

Chance is already hard in his pants and he's painfully slow in getting to his belt. He strips off his shirt and his jeans hang low and loose around his hips. Martin wrestles him onto the bed and they tangle. Chance breathes hotly into his neck, smelling of faint aftershave and cigarettes from the Hippo Club, tasting of bitterness and resentment.

And Chance wants to top, every muscle in his body straining. He hoists himself up on his good side, panting with the effort. For Chance, it's been months; jerking himself off alone in the shower just isn't the same. He hasn't had a real fuck since - his brain stutters, flashing backwards - Ruthie? Samantha? It doesn't matter. Martin squirms compliantly, skin slick with sweat and the lube Chance pulls from the bedside drawer.

"No way," Martin grunts, and Chance's cock twitches in dismay, "Not without a rubber, I'm not stupid." He has the little plastic and foil package in his teeth and tears it open daintily with his canines.

Chance's whole body quivers when Martin rolls the condom down, his fingers searing dime-sized drops of perspiration along the second skin. Chance chokes back a whimper of pleasure and masks it by biting his lip.

Martin's done this before, he knows what to do, and there's a moment or two where the only thing that's awkward is Chance, as he curses and swears half-under his breath. Martin's ready; Chance tests first with one finger, then two, playing the lube strategically as he goes. Martin gurgles and jerks his hips in the air in anticipation. Chance withdraws his fingers and slowly presses in. Martin twitches around him, so hot and tight and perfect, and better than all those women Chance used to bag.

Martin's a talkative bastard, and he doesn't stop now. When Chance begins to thrust slowly in and out, he raises his head from the pillow and looks over his shoulder at him.

"There's a contract out on me, isn't there?" Martin grunts as Chance hits the right spot. It doesn't stop him for long. "I mean, if there's a time or a place I'd do a hit, it'd be now. Get everyone in the same place, gives you an alibi."

"You're just paranoid," Chance lies, his cheek pressed hard against Martin's shoulder. He's going soft inside and he bites his lip hard to keep the cries in. That feeling when the bottom of his stomach flips, inside-out, it's the same feeling in freefall. He grabs for Martin's cock and gets it, and Martin loses his voice for a moment.

A moment, that's it; after they fall into the new rhythm, Martin catches his breath again. "You know all that stuff I said about you in high school? I'm sorry. You were such a dickhead."

Chance grunts in the back of his throat, the parts of him given over to sex unable to make words. If he could stick a gag in Martin's mouth right now, he'd do it but he'd have to let go first, and there's no chance of that happening. His hand slides so easily along Martin. They're sticky with sweat and the sheets are tangled around them in knots, clothes pinned beneath them and sliding to the floor. He can feel himself tensing up, and as Martin cries out under him, Chance bursts into orgasm, crying and biting and falling over himself, until there's nothing left but the starburst of sheets and Martin's soft exhale.

"Fuck, I could use a cigarette," says Martin.


	6. Chapter 6

AUG 6 4:12 HRS

When he dreams, he is falling. Below him stretches flat green water with flotillas of garbage and seagulls, above him nothing but an endless sky and a ribbon of steel and wire. It's the bridge and it's getting smaller overhead as he falls. Sometime soon, he knows the safety line will kick in. Jim Hart set it, the best rigging man in the business. But the river keeps rushing up at him, until he can see the crest of every wave, and on each crest a phoney fifty.

AUG 6 5:45 HRS

Chance jerks awake to an empty bed and the sound of water-pipes humming in the wall. A quick glance at the alarm clock shows it's early: too early for decent people but at least there's no chance of being mistaken for one. The shitty room is showing its age, and all the signs of the seduction from the night before. Sordid. Chance's clothes still lie crumpled in the heap he tossed them but the others - he remembers Martin - have been gathered up and neatly folded on the edge of the dresser.

Chance rolls over with a groan, pins and needles shooting down his right arm like they do every morning. He sits up slowly, kneading the stiffness from his muscles with the other hand. The morning sun is leaking through the venetian blinds and after he digs out a cigarette to light, he flips open the blinds.

There it is - that damn Caprice Classic he thought he'd seen the night before, with two men in the front seat he knows have to be spooks - their nonchalance gives them away. He memorizes the license plate just in case. They're utter slobs; the driver is smoking and dropping butts out the window, and the other guy's got half a fast-food breakfast shoved in his face. They look like what they are, two flyweight hacks out of their league, waiting around to see which titan falls first.

Idly, he thinks how easy it would be to take Martin out of the picture - just a couple of taps to the back of the head in execution - and he gets a cold, hair-raising chill on the back of his neck and forces himself to look away from the window. Instead, he just smokes and lets the cigarette hang from the corner of his mouth while he paws through his bag for clean clothes.

There is nothing vulnerable about Chance when he's naked; he manages to look predatory even when he's sitting still. He still isn't dressed by the time Martin comes out of the shower with his hair in strange points and dark circles under his eyes.

"You know, somehow I thought you'd be a little worse for wear." Martin wraps the towel low around his waist, low enough to bare a couple of long, white knife-scars across his hip. He's sinewy, all muscle and bone and nerves. It's easy to see the travelling worn on his body: vaccination pricks from Indonesia, freckles from too much sun in South America, blister scars and calluses from Burma, and flecks across his hands that mean bare-knuckle fighting in the backalleys of any city in America.

"Broke my shoulder in a car wreck once,"Chance shrugs. He's suddenly uncomfortable with being seen like this. There's nothing between him and Martin but the lies they both cling to. "Nothing like those beauties. Switchblades?"

"Throwing knives," Martin shakes his head and sends a rainshower across the motel room. "In Belgium. There was this thing I had to do that went sour. I hate to get so close, you know? Hand-to-hand combat is just so personal."

Chance just raises an eyebrow at that and Martin giggles.

"Okay, well, maybe not as personal, but you know what I mean. It's one thing to look down the scope at a guy six blocks away, it's another thing entirely to have to go in with your bare hands."

Chance sucks his cigarette into a tiny stub and grinds the filter to death in the ashtray. The hangover is pressing close behind his eyes, keeping time to his pulse."The way I see it, there's two different kinds of people," he says, "The kind that learn what they need and do their job, and don't get caught up in it... and the ones with feelings."

Martin snorts, "I don't have feelings."

"That's where I think you're wrong, Martin," he drawls (and Martin makes a little sad-dog face) "I think you care very much about what you do. You wouldn't have such a problem with it if you didn't."

"Hey, who says I have a problem? Aside from you? Who are you? You won't tell me but I know that -" and Martin points unerringly to where Chance's gun sits in the bedside drawer under the Bible "- is government issue. Do you have a badge? Are you AWOL? Are you wearing a wire, goddammit?"

"Christ, Martin," Chance whips the towel off Martin's skinny hips and gives him a swat with one corner of his way into the bathroom. "You're too paranoid for your own good sometimes." He runs scalding-hot water from the tap to splash his face. There's an ugly, metallic taste on the back of his tongue. He scrabbles through his own medicine bag for that little orange bottle his doctors gave him. "I'm bareass naked, we fucked last night and you wanna know if I'm wired? Give me a break."

"Okay, I'm sorry." Martin pulls on his trousers and picks distastefully at the remnants of last night's entertainment at the Hippo Club. "You say I care about my work, that's true. I'm a perfectionist. Of course I care. There's a perfection to the trajectory of a bullet, it's the human element that screws it all up."

Chance drops the pill bottle from nerveless fingers and it spills all over the tiled floor, clattering into tiny hail pellets. For a second, he can't remember where he is - he feels perched on the guardrail of a bridge somewhere - and then flames spring up around him. He cries out and his breath tangles in his throat as his his muscles lock. It's an eternity that he dances in darkness and ash, before he draws breath at last and can open his eyes again.

"... shit." He's half-over the edge of the bathtub puking, a sodden washcloth hanging with him and a thin, dark spectre over his shoulder pressing toilet paper to a cut on his cheekbone.

"Jesus Christ, man, that was terrifying," Martin's got a nervous laugh that slices painfully through the fog in Chance's head. "Are you alright?"

Chance feels the pills under his palms slowly being ground to dust. "Everything's not fucking alright. I want up." He can't make his body do what he want and he flops miserably for a moment before giving up. Martin scoops up a handful of what's left and puts them back in the bottle.

"Gabapentin? An anti-convulsant?" Martin quavers, "Shouldn't you actually, I don't know, be taking these?"

"Fuck you, Martin," Chance gags. "It's under control."

"Fine, then, have it your own way, tough guy." Martin drops him like a broken doll and stalks out of the bathroom. The door slams behind him and there's finally blessed silence. Chance rests his face against the cold edge of the bathtub and breathes deep into his ragged lungs. He thinks he can hear the Caprice peeling away after Martin's taxicab.

Eventually he crawls out to the bed like a wounded dog and lies there for a while, staring at the water-stained ceiling. When the phone rings it isn't even a surprise.

"Yeah?"

It isn't good news, or even anyone he wants to talk to, it's Vukovich and his long-distance line crackles away merrily.

"Chance, what the hell is the matter with you, man?" The indignation crawls out of V.'s mouth and across the phone line, tasting bitter in Chance's throat. "You're losing your edge. Forty-eight hours you've been in that ass-backwards town and whaddya got to show for it?"

"He hasn't made a move on the target, has he?" Chance growls. "I know there's surveillance all over him. Have you seen him whip out a rifle and start taking names?"

Vukovich's laugh is a harsh bark; "Don't play with bullshit with me, man, I know exactly what's going on up there. You're thinking with your cock again and it's gonna get you in trouble. No one's on your side anymore, Chance. You don't do this thing and you'll be out on your ass. I'll send you up for the diamond merchant job."

Chance's stomach dropped and he resisted every urge to crawl back into the bathroom to puke his guts up. "You son of a bitch, you were just as much a part of that as I was. If I swing, you swing with me."

"Somehow, I don't think so," V. said lightly, "You're not a hotshot anymore, Chance, you're a liability. Dead weight. If something happens to you now it'll only be a blessing."

"And to think you used to be my friend," Chance swore half-under his breath. He could hear Vukovitch laughing on the other end and knew the rest of the field office dicks were standing around for the punchline. He almost didn't hear it when it came;

" I'd put you out of your misery myself if I had to," said Vukovitch as Chance hung up the phone.


	7. Chapter 7

AUG 7 19:45 HRS

He'd always loathed Friday night dances at the school. He'd been awkward with people then, and even now the thought of dancing made him sick inside. Once he asked a girl to dance and she laughed at him right there on the edge of the floor. After that, the dances were just an excuse to sneak out of the gymnasium and knife car tires. He remembered nights of picking fights behind the school and getting the shit kicked out of him by the senior kids. He hated the cheap lights, he hated the high school girls, and he hated the music, and it was perversion that the reunion was even attempting to recapture those times.

And just for a touch of irony, "Small Town Boy" is playing in the gymnasium when Chance comes through the front doors of Pointe High. He can feel the bass reverberate in his gut.

"Welcome back, Pointer! I'm Arlene Osslot-Joseph!" A chubby, overly-cheerful brunette squeezed into a secretary's skirt and jacket greets him with a smile and a glance at her collection of laminated nametags. There's a whole dismal row of the things, with names and hideous yearbook mugshots. "Richard Chance? You haven't changed much. A little greyer. Maybe."

"That's flattering of you to say. You know you can tell me I look like hell. That's what this reunion's for anyway, isn't it?" He fumbles with the badge pin, toying briefly with the idea of swapping the cheap reunion card for his official USSS ID and grins. "Go on, you look like you've had a couple kids."

"Oh!" The insult doesn't even register, and Arlene practically falls over herself to get to her photos, the ones in her pocketbook of her three blonde pixie children. "These are mine. That's Lucas, Hannah and Logan."

Chance squints at the photos and back at her. "They don't look like Robert Joseph at all, do they? Your oldest is about nine and a half. When you ran around on him in final year, did you also sucker him into getting hitched?"

She snarls and tries to keep a straight face - fails - and has to restrain herself from slapping him in the face. Truth be told, he does sort of miss it when all she does is hiss and spit:

"And you're still an asshole, Richard! Some things never change!"

It's true - and the truth should hurt a little but it doesn't - he's so accustomed to it now it doesn't even sting. He shakes his head and laughs as he turns away, his spine so ramrod-straight at makes his whole body ache.

It's weird being back in Pointe High all grown up, and for a few minutes all he can do is follow his memories down the hallways, past sets of washroom and classrooms, down into the science wing where it's deserted.

It's nearly silent except for the muted music rolling down the hallway, and the scuff-click of his footsteps. High school was hell for everyone, and there's no denying it. Entire professional lives were dedicated to forgetting those years, or at least compensating for the agony they caused. No one can be pleased about coming back to the same shithole they spent their teenage years trying to avoid.

Chance counts the lockers, remembering the number of times he broke into them looking for cash. He was a money man even then, and when he graduated (not top of his class but pretty damn respectably) he'd wanted to get as far away from Michigan as he could. His aptitudes - not to mention a certain quality called "independence" that was tossing him into military lock-up every single weekend - got him on the list of candidates for the Secret Service and the rest, as they say, was history.

But coming home again, and coming home in so many obvious fragments distresses Chance. He isn't here to impress any of the people he went to school with, but he still can't deny that there's a big messy fuck-up looming over his head. If he'd been mailed home in a coffin it would have been easier to take, but not this. Not like this.

He breaks the shitty cycle of thoughts by breaking into a classroom and stealing a quick cigarette at an open window. The air outside is starting to cool from the day's heat, and for a minute he can forget the pain and embarassment of the morning's events. Martin is a problem. Chance knew he would be, but didn't anticipate how much. His supervisor - and Vukovich too, that arrogant prick - was counting on Chance's utter hatred for Grosse Pointe to carry the job through. They probably expected him to pick up the threads of an old high-school friendship and lay a noose for the hired hitman. But if that were true, it wouldn't be this simple. Chance hadn't managed an ID on either of the two shadowing spooks in the Caprice Classic, and Martin sure as hell was tearing up the town on his own vendetta. If this continued any longer, the whole place would go up in flames.

Chance spits out of the window and ground out his cigarette on the stone sill. Well, if Vukovich wants a showdown, he's going to get one.

AUG 7 20:05 HRS

The gymnasium's dark, pierced here and there with candy-coloured lights on towers, and spattered with fat white drops from the disco ball looming over the dance floor. He holds back a moment, letting his eyes adjust, and watching the migration of the class of 1986 to the bar and back. They are bopping - or purposefully trying not to bop - to Bruce Springsteens' "Dancing in the Dark." There's a lot of booze being flung around this hallowed hall of teenage angst, and he's glad for a moment that he's not the only person in this goddamn place feeling like he doesn't belong.

He catches a glimpse of Martin by the bar, on the arm of a girl too casually-dressed to be serious about him. Around them, everyone smiles and nods; the men look smart in their cheap suits, and the women just look cheap.

He shuffles over as casually as he can through the people he doesn't remember, orders a club soda and waits for his hands to stop shaking. Martin glances his way and the look is black and fierce.

"Thought you weren't coming," there is none of the false joviality in his voice, none of the little boy lost, or even of the reluctant hero. This is pure, terse, professional killer talking.

"I have some business to take of here," Chance deadpans. They lock eyes for a second and it's all Chance can do not to throttle him in public. But then, he's not even sure he could take Martin in a fair fight, which is why he has the gun to begin with.

Thankfully, Martin's escort takes his arm.

"Hey. Tough guy." She's pretty but Chance wouldn't want to see her naked. She smirks at him. "Long time no see, Richard. Remember me?"

No. He scowls and Martin steps in.

"Rich, you remember Debi, right? Senior year? We're uh-"

"- Catching up," she supplies, and Chance can see the cringe that Martin tries valiantly to hide. Hah. "Ten years, huh? Where have you been?"

"Around," Chance says distractedly, watching the entrance to the gymnasium where he's certain he's just seen a wickedly familiar face - and not from high school - skirt the fringes. "Ten years is a long time."

"Well, I can see you're not interested in continuing this little discussion," Debi huffs. (Is that because there's a big black hole instead of a memory of her? Chance wonders.) "Maybe later, when you're *at* the reunion?"

"Oh, fuck you," Chance mutters as he watches Debi's ass wiggle off. Martin sends a frown back over his shoulder on the way that's venom.

Right, then. Down to business.

The gun's hanging heavy under his arm, a comfort even though he's certain it's a curse. Maybe he'll just follow Martin and shoot them both. He'd have to take the heat for killing the girl though, and Vukovich -

He pauses, that same thought stuttering in his brain that's been hanging overhead all week. Vukovich sure as hell isn't expecting him to come back. He might even have sent those two Caprice fellows after him. That's not worth finding out the hard way, taking a couple bullets at the end of a job. There's no way Chance is going to prison for that cocksucker, either.

"Well, fuck it." He limps back to the bar and takes a double of whatever piss they have masquerading as whiskey. He waits until Martin and Debi leave the dance to go upstairs, and then he follows them.

The trouble is, he's not the only one with the same idea. The guy Chance saw coming into the dance, the little guy built like a brick shithouse, is having the same sort of evening and thinks shadowing Martin's a much better plan than dancing to The Boss with a bunch of other losers. He slips out of the gym close behind them, and Chance hurries to catch up.

"Watch where you're going!" He shoulders past a puffy-eyed blonde in a body brace - hey, see? It could have been worse - and a trio of thick-necked goons, but by the time he gets out into the hallway again, the place is deserted. Shit. Echoing footsteps retreat somewhere, and when he cranes his head back he can see the shadow of the little guy sneaking up the main staircase. Fuck, no! No one's going to weasel him out his kill if he can help it.

He's not even sure how he gets up the stairs, but by the time he does, he finds Martin locked in a life-or-death struggle with the little guy. Debi's sprawled against the wall looking dead or unconscious, and Martin's going blue in the face with his attacker's hands wrapped around his throat. It's only a few feet, and Chance hoists his cane and gives the guy a bash over the head. It doesn't split his skull like Chance intended, but his grip loosens momentarily, and that's all the advantage Martin needs. He gives one solid kick to the balls, and slides one hand into his breast pocket for something, anything to use as a weapon. He comes out with a real-estate pen. Desperation. It slides easily into the little guy's throat and Martin's hands go slick with blood.

In a couple of seconds, the whole thing's over, and Martin's reeling away with a nosebleed, his face white as a sheet. He finally catches sight of Chance standing there.

"Kinda cutting it close, aren't we?" He sways and puts his hand against the wall for support, smearing a messy handprint across the bank of lockers. "For a minute there, I thought I was a goner. You know who this guy is?"

"Basque Separatist," Chance muses, prodding at the dead assassin's ribs with the tip of his cane. "As I recall, you've been on their 'Most Wanted' list for a few years."

"Rather not talk about it," Martin wheezes. "I'm not gonna ask you where you got your intelligence about him, but yeah. I'm glad the bastard's dead, but he can't stay here. Pull down that poster."

They're wrapping up the dearly departed when Debi, no longer dead or unconscious, comes to and starts squealing. Appropriately enough, it's bloody murder:

"Did you just - Martin? What the hell are you DOING?" Her shrill voice is echoing through the second-floor hallway and sending splitting pain through Chance's head. "Did you just kill that man? Who is he? Who are YOU?"

"Long time no see, Debbie," Chance grins wickedly. "Remember me? Senior year, Martin and I are just uh-" he looks down at their handiwork, then over to Martin.

"- Catching up," cracks Martin as he tries to heft the head end of the assassin. He bends in the middle like a broken doll. He giggles. "Grab the rest of him, would you?"

Debi escapes down the stairs while they're still doubled over laughing.

The Basque is heavier than he looks, but Martin and Chance heave him down the two flights of stairs to the basement without running into any other partygoers, and dispose of his body neatly in the ancient furnace. With the door open, Chance stares deep into the heart of the burning coals.

"You know, it takes over two and a half hours for a body to burn completely."

"We're not going to be here when they find him," Martin says, stepping over from the custodian's sink and pulling his sleeve down over his hand to flip the door shut again. "At least, I won't. Are you planning to stay here and explain to the authorities why it was so necessary to shove a Basque asshole into a furnace?"

Chance holds the door and ushers Martin through. "What about Debi?" 

That little-boy look comes back into Martin's eyes again, and he shrugs. "I kinda liked her. But I guess we're going have to kill her. Dumb fucking luck, too. I was supposed to knock her Dad off, too." He slouches up the stairs.

"No, you can't do that." Chance follows him with the faint grinding of rusty gears going through his aching head. "He's testifying on a counterfeit money-laundering thing in Detroit. You nail him, and the whole Secret Service is gonna to be on your ass faster than flies on shit. And what's this 'we' stuff? I didn't kill him with a pen."

"I know," Martin sighs, and scrubs in vain at the dark lines along his palms. "That was a nice pen, too."

They don't speak until they're back in the second-floor hallway by the nurse's station, staring at the faint smears that could be anything, but that they both know are blood. Chance looks over at the heavy door splashed with the red cross and raises an eyebrow.

"Hold on a sec." It doesn't take him long to break in, and he comes out a minute later with half a bottle of ammonia to douse the bloodstains.

"Holy shit," Martin's shaking his head and grinning like a fool, breaths away from hysterical laughter again. "I've never seen anyone do that outside of bad movies. Who the hell *are* you?"

Chance smiles and empties the bottle on Martin's nosebleed stains, and the blood marks from the Basque. When there's nothing left to soak, he tosses the bottle away and shrugs nonchalantly. "I'm with the government - no, not like that-" Martin jumps sideways like a cat and Chance puts out a hand to catch him . "Paper. Unless you're printing funny money, I'm not out to get you. Understand?"

Martin's jaw drops a good half foot, which makes Chance laugh and dig in his pocket for his credentials. Martin just stares at the badge and whimpers. "Shit, you're for real."

"Step into my office, Mr. Blank," Chance winks and ushers him through. "Against the wall. Palms flat, legs apart."

Martin can barely contain his giggles as he obeys, glancing back over his shoulder with wide eyes. Chance steps in close and pats him down, under the arms, down his sides, between his legs. He's doing all he can to keep from laughing; it's contagious.

"Hey, listen." Martin pauses in his wriggling against the wall, and Chance expects the wail of sirens. Instead, it's an ancient, familiar refrain booming from the gymnasium. Oh, christ. "Frankie says 'Relax,' Rich. Don't do it." But his hand twitches down to slide along Chance's thigh, taunting him. Chance's giggles turn to half-stifled grunts.

"What the hell does Frankie know," he mutters, his hip quivering against Martin's. "Don't stop what you're doing."

"Oh, this?" Martin's hand brushes up along Chance's thigh and hovers at the crotch of his trousers. "Say please."

A thrill passes through Chance, the way his heart sticks in his throat during a jump. He butts his head against Martin's shoulder and clenches his jaw: "Please."

Martin touches him gently through the layers of fabric, nervous fingers tracing an outline over Chance's fly. He seems reluctant at first, but as Chance grows aroused he finds his confidence. When he fumbles at the zipper, Chance gurgles in the back of his throat and sways, pressing Martin firmly against the wall. In retaliation, Martin grabs harder.

Chance buckles against Martin, clutching handfuls of his suitjacket for support, his cane clattering away to fall somewhere at their feet. When he can spare the breath, he curses.

"Goddammit, I knew I shouldn't let you get carried away," he gasps. Martin slides away from underneath him and pivots, still holding tight. Their positions reversed, Chance leans with his back against the wall, and the only thing that keeps him from a quick descent is Martin's hand in his pants.

"Half an hour ago I thought you were going to kill me," Martin takes advantage of the situation to help himself to Chance's gun. He draws it from the shoulder holster with one fluid movement, almost too quick for the eye to register. He tosses it aside.

"Half an hour," grunts Chance, "I was. You're lucky." Martin's gun is digging into his shoulder, and further down he can feel Martin's own growing hard-on against his leg. It's a delicate balance when he shifts one hand from the wall, his weak leg trembling underneath him.

"You say that awful casually for a guy I've got by the balls," but Martin's got a smug smile all over his face; he's enjoying making Chance squirm.

And Chance, for his part, can't complain. Even when Martin shoves him sideways onto the examination table and he takes a bruising stirrup to the hip. He leans back against the table, accompanied by the sharple crackle of onionskin paper.

"You know, I used to be terrrified of this place," Chance's eyes droop half-closed and he stares at the gross anatomy charts on the opposite wall. He's thinking about his cock and what Martin's doing to it, and about the illustrated insides of a poor guy's painted brainpan.

"Oh yeah?" Martin's busied himself with his own dick, unsurprisingly, and while Chance is thinking about the consistency of jello, he's getting hard. Then Martin's stripping both their dress-pants off in a hurry. "It's my turn."

Chance shivers where the cold metal cabinet is pressing against his kidney. His trousers fall around his ankles. His knee is shaking and he stares at it, bewildered. He puts one hand against Martin's chest and feels the rise and fall of his breath. Ribs slide beneath his fingers, Martin's body thin and strong, all sinews and tendons and wiry muscles. He's warm and strong and so close.

He pushes gently against Martin's breastbone, rocking him back on his heels a few inches. Martin grins, and when gravity brings him back in, he presses even closer than before. One hand snakes out to catch Chance's wrist on his chest, and he brings it down to pin it against the edge of the table.

The second push is more of a shove, and when Martin grabs his other hand and pins it too, the answering force clicks Chance's teeth together sharply. He stifles a surprised squeak as the air is driven from his lungs in a rush.

"Relax," says Martin, all sharp teeth and quick, sly tongue. He claims Chance's neck with a full bite to the base of his throat and grins.

"I'd fight back but I have a feeling you'd win," Chance murmurs, without even an edge of uncertainty in his voice. And that's all that Martin needs.

Some kind-hearted and well-meaning soul distributed condoms to the kids at Grosse Pointe, and there's a whole jar of the things, red and green and orange and yellow and pink, and when Martin digs his hand into the jar to grab one he knocks it over. A rainbow spills across the tiny office, plain and flavoured, lubricated and dry.

"Quick, pick one," Martin grunts. With one hand still pinning Chance to the table, he's fighting to retrieve the KY he swears he caught a glimpse of. It's just beyond his reaching fingertips.

"Pink," grins Chance, as he daintily picks it off the countertop. "Goes with your eyes."

"And you said I talked too much." Martin grabs the lube and then it's a struggle to get everything on in the right order. Chance is squirming against his leg and making it hard to concentrate, and Martin's got the condom between slippery fingers. For a minute, they're both close to laughter again, when finally, the damn thing goes on, and Chance crows in delight, and then Martin grabs the end of Chance's tie and feeds it to him just to get him to shut up.

He has to grab Chance's cock again to just get him to stand straight, and Chance laughs and tries to bite, but at least he knows when to stop fighting. It's hysterical, with Chance bent over the exam table and Martin trying not to scream with joy, and then just when it looks like they're done for, something clicks and everything goes smooth and slick and quiet and perfect the way they'd never imagined. Chance bites down on his tie and rides it.  
Dangerous neon flashes behind Chance's half-closed eyelids, and his breath rushes in his nostrils. Nothing matters any more; not the reunion, not the bureau, not the dead guy crackling away in the basement furnace. It's nearly perverse; the only way he can ever be complete is when he's reduced to ashes.

When he hears Martin's moan, Chance holds his breath and lets the ocean rush over his head.


	8. Chapter 8

AUG 7 21:56 HRS

"Are you still here?" Martin giggles, peeling himself away from Chance. They are half-entwined somewhere near the floor of the nurse's office, half-covered in crumpled paper from the exam table, half-damp with shared sweat and semen. Chance pulls his focus away from the stained acoustic ceiling back to the moment. Martin's a shambles, shirt and tie askew, trousers sagging around his ankles. He can only imagine that he looks worse.

"I need a change of scene," Chance sighs with his back against the wall. "The treasury world's too small for a guy like me."

"World your oyster, and all that?" Martin smirks, offering a hand to pull him to his feet. "I know a little business opportunity that's happening at the moment, I have a concern. Do you know those two guys that have been shadowing me for the past couple of days?"

Chance nods as he fusses with the knot of his tie. "Spooks. They look like it anyway."

"Yeah, that's them. Big boat of a car. I'm pretty sure there here to stop that little job I mentioned. Debi's dad. It's a big contract, I'm not ashamed of it but I was having, uh. - " he ducks his head in embarassment, a faint red blush coming to his cheeks, "-moral objections to the completion of the contract. It's worth a lot of money to a whole bunch of people, and I don't want them taking my bonus and contracting a hit on me with it if I don't come through for them."

"Well, the Witness Protection Program hasn't lost anyone in a good six months, you could always try that route," Chance shrugs. "Turning State evidence will buy you some time."

"What that'll buy me is a snitch jacket," scowls Martin, "But it wouldn't do me any good. Would you be surprised if I said the government wants to keep it quiet too? It's probably slush money I'm getting for this job, but I'm not picky."

"Looks like you and I are booked for the same cruise." Chance limps across the room to stoop and retrieve his gun. He knows he's about to do something stupid, but he can't help himself.

Martin steps up close behind him and the cold nub of his automatic presses into the soft side of his neck. Chance freezes, half-crouched on the floor.

"Stop." Martin's voice has flattened out again to the clipped, detatched accent of a professional hitman. "Don't touch it."

Chance grunts and drops his hand to the floor for support. "Look, I'm not gonna shoot you."

"You'll forgive me, but I'd rather this not be the time to prove it's true. Up. Get up."

How it could go from pillow talk to this? Chance stands up shakily and puts his hands behind his head. Whatever bug Martin's got in his shorts it seems to have crawled up his ass.

"Okay, what are you gonna do now, tough guy?"

Martin's got so much pent-up in him that he's trembling. The butt of the gun dig sharply into Chance's spine, that part where he knows only complete paralyzation awaits if the damn thing goes off. There's a long moment of silence where Chance tries not to breathe.

"What do you really want?" Martin's voice sounds hollow and empty. They really have nothing left to lose, either of them. Why shouldn't it end here? Chance can picture his own body, shattered and broken, burning to ash in the furnace downstairs. He wonders idly if there's enough room. "Why the hell did you come here in the first place?

Chance takes a breath and sighs.

"Once upon a time," he says bitterly, "I was a hotshot cop. Probably the same kinda boy you used to be before you got those knife scars in Belgium. It's a tough job. There was this job I had, a counterfeiter. You wouldn't have heard anything about it." Why is he babbling like this? Chance bites his bottom lip, trying to draw blood, or feeling, or something resembling it. "You know how things go. A job can get bad real quick. This job..." He traces the razor-thin line across the edge of his forehead, he can feel the ridge under his fingertip and knows it will never fade. "This job went bad. Things went wrong."

"Go on," says Martin. The gun wavers, shivers across his kidneys, pausing at the notch between hip and ribcage. Chance takes a deep breath.

"When you find yourself at the bottom of the pit, there's only two things you can do. You can try to climb out, or you can keep digging." He closes his eyes and in his memory he can see the locker room, smell the stale weightlifter's chalk and stale sweat, the cedar from the sauna nearby. Vukovich's aftershave tingling in his nostrils and burning bitter on the back of his tongue. "My partner and I... we didn't climb. And now he wants to turn me in to save his reputation. It'd be even better if I ended up dead somewhere, he'd be ecstatic."

The gun drops away altogether, and behind his eyelids Chance can see the steam rising from the sauna rocks, the water hissing against the heating elements. There's a shotgun in the locker. A shotgun, and then Vukovich is turning to him and reaching for the briefcase. Reaching out, reaching, Master's face turning to anger, the locker... his hand goes numb, the steam bursts into flames and then...

Chance is on the floor again. It's getting to be a familiar position, and when he realizes it, he laughs. His laugh sounds like death.

Martin's laugh sounds a little better than that. "Yeah, maybe you actually should be taking those pills." Somehow he's gotten into Chance's jacket pocket and popped the bottle, and now he slips one of the damn things under Chance's tongue and feeds him half a glass of tepid water. Chance chokes it down and wipes his mouth on his sleeve.

"Shit," he says angrily,"I didn't mean to go like that."

Martin lends him an arm and helps him up. "It wasn't that bad. I kind of expected it. You started getting weird."

Chance makes a sour face. "What the hell are you gonna do now? You can't stay with me, I'm gonna get my ass fired if you don't turn up dead by midnight, and those goons out there are definitely going to come shooting for you now we've taken the Basque out of the picture."

Martin scowls at that. "Any smart ideas? Or do I just make a run for it?"

"Oh, fuck that," Chance says. "Can I have my gun back? I'm still a fucking good shot, and those assholes in the Caprice deserve it."

AUG 7 22:35 HRS

Outside Grosse Pointe High, it had started to drizzle and the windows of the Caprice were fogging. For the two agents inside, this was only a minor setback, as they were supposed to keep watch and simply report on the actions of their target. They never expected their target to strike back.

"Ok, someone's coming out of there..." the first agent scrunched down in the front seat, checking his sidearm and handcuffs. "Shit. How in hell is Blank still standing? I thought that little Basque assassin would have gotten him by now."

"I think it's worse than that," the second agent reached slowly for the lever to put the car in gear. "He's with Chance."

"Looks like shit from here. Drive."

Slowly, the big Caprice inched its way out of the parking space, clearing the way for a quick drive-by. "We gotta neutralize that son of a bitch before Blank gets wise to us. You can take the shot."

At the side door of the high school, Martin had paused, sniffing the air. The muffled sounds of the dance party still filtered through the windows. His gaze travelled slowly across the parking lot. He bent his head to light a cigarette, and out of the corner of his mouth, he said:

"That them? Big tan car, three o'clock?"

Chance nodded, leaning in with his own smoke for a light. "Bureau car," he replied in a puff of smoke, "But they got the cheap one. Armor rating's nil and the glass is only safety, not bulletproof." His fingers twitched on the butt of his gun as it snuck out from under the edge of his jacket. "They're uh... yeah, they're headed this way."

Martin flicked the cigarette with the grace of a dancer. "You want it?"

"Love to."

The Caprice came broadside to the stairs, and as the passenger-side window crept down, Chance loosened his gun from its holster. Martin, his back to the car, didn't even flinch. His dark eyes were pinned on Chance. He whispered, "Fucking love you, Richie," as the gun came up, past his shoulder, past his throat, into the street light's gleam....

Hell broke loose. The agent in the passenger seat tried to get a shot off before his window shattered. The tires started to squeal as the car fishtailed on the damp asphalt. Chance let a few shots go wild into the hood, the front tires, before he stepped forward, past Martin's black shadow, a grin of pure joy on his face. The driver stomped on the gas and managed to get the car lodged in the tail end of a BMW. The screams inside the car changed from surprise to a high whine of terror.

And then Martin turned one hand sliding deep into his jacket. As he advanced down the stairs, he lovingly brought the gun to bear. He heard Chance's giggle behind him, as he leaned against the rail to reload.

The engine was still running when he reached the car, but it was ragged and laboured. Blood streaked the driver's side window, and the agent was slumped forward against the steering wheel, not breathing. Savagely, Martin yanked at the passenger door and it rocked open, the other agent sliding out onto the pavement in a mess of blood and torn clothing. He was breathing hard, clutching at a ragged wound in his shoulder.

"Hope you had a good time tonight," Martin said lightly, jabbing at him with the muzzle of his gun. He turned and saw Chance coming down the stairs to join him. "Is there anything you wanted to say before we kill you?"

"You bastard," the agent hissed through clenched teeth at Chance. "Vukovitch was right. You are a two-timing double-crossing son of a whore. Did you think you'd get away with it?"

"Actually?" Chance leveled his gun at the agent's sweating forehead. "I have."

The two of the fired in tandem, the shots ringing out as one. And by the time the complacent Grosse Pointe Police Department arrived at the scene, Chance and Martin were long gone.

OCT 30 18:07 HRS

There’s a tiny island in the West Indies. It’s so far out to sea that it’s almost adrift, a rock and coral outcrop surrounded by the skeletons of hundred-year-old ships. The sea is green sometimes, and it roars through the shoals, turning over the bones of dead sailors and bringing gold coins to shore.

On the wide, white beach, there is a beach shack that serves drinks, and will rent tourists metal detectors, if tourists ever got out this far. Mostly the drinks are for the owners, and the metal detectors bring them enough old shipwrecked metal to keep them comfortable.

The locals don’t really know much about them, the two men who ride into town in a rusted-out American drive Subaru. Neither of them talk much. One is dark-haired and thin, he wears dark sunglasses and no one has seen the colour of his eyes. The other is slowly greying and walks with a cane, crooked to one side in some grievous unknown injury. They always pay in battered American bills, but they are polite and keep to themselves. And so it goes.


End file.
